Gersonides Final - Dr. Rynhold

Aryeh Sklar

Gersonides Final

Professor Rynhold

2.

In attempting to adduce Gersonides’ view of prophecy, one may find that Gersonides has a view at odds with the traditional religious definition of prophecy as a supernatural event. In some fashion, it can be contrasted with the view of Maimonides. Maimonides, on the one hand, goes in two directions with this. It is true, he says that prophecy is natural inasmuch as those with perfected intellects and morality can receive true prophecy automatically. They then receive information through the Active Intellect, to the rational faculty and subsequently to the imaginative faculty, which have to have been perfected to the highest level. However, he says, God can “intervene” and remove one’s ability to receive the prophecy. This is supernatural in a way.

But another way Gersonides’s view can be contrasted with Maimonides is in his view of the knowledge of the prophet over the philosopher. Maimonides seems to consider the prophet as being in possession of more information than the philosopher, since the prophet receives information from the Active Intellect to both his rational and imaginative faculties, while the prophet only receives this information to his rational faculty (Guide 2:37). The advantage of the prophet is that he can now make true predictions. Thus, it can be said for Maimonides that the prophet has more information than the wise man.

We might be tempted to say that it is similar to what Gersonides writes in his introduction to Wars of the Lord, “[T]he knowledge of the prophet is generally greater than the knowledge of a wise man who is not a prophet.” However, what Gersonides meant by this is that the prophet attains knowledge more easily, in a swifter way, than the wise man, and that is their only difference. Thus, the prophet generally has more knowledge just because it comes to him faster than just through wisdom. And this seems to bear out in Gersonides’ description of the prophet, which seems to be very naturalistic. This seems to be more naturalistic than even Maimonides’ view.

(At the outset, I would like demonstrate that our question does not pertain to dreams and divinations, which are not prophecy, and certainly the quote above does not apply to them, as Gersonides makes clear, (59) “A condition for prophecy is wisdom, which is obvious from the very nature of prophecy. But this is not true for divination or dreams. Indeed, sometimes children and fools have more such knowledge [by way of divination and dreams] than many who are wiser than they.” He also argues that a person can divine or dream theoretical knowledge without knowing first principles, which cannot happen in prophecy.)

It may be true that the prophet is a wise person. But not every wise person is a prophet. Indeed, there are elements of the prophet for Gersonides which place him on a much different level of knowledge than the wise man who is not a prophet. For example, his discussion of free will and prophecy is resolved through viewing prophecy as knowing heavenly-determined events which can change through choice. I shall explain.

The problem he deals with, along with Averroes, is how humans could predict events and retain free will. For if events can be predicted because they are necessary, then we lack free will because they will happen. But if they are contingent, how can we accurately depict the future? Averroes, he notes, “decided that there is no communication with respect to chance events.”

Gersonides’ own answer is that human events are determined, with an exception - if man makes a choice through his intellect to defy the natural course of events. The natural course of events is determined, which is so from the fact that we see that “astrologers… can frequently predict the thoughts and actions of man correctly.” And the fact that they also often err is of no consequence, since we merely lack enough knowledge to be able to be accurate 100% of the time. “We know very little of this [astrologically-ordained] order from observation, even over a long period of time. But the little we do know clearly reveals that the circumstances of human affairs are determined by the heavenly bodies.” And, he argues, we just see empirically there seems to be order to the universe. But, as we said earlier, Gersonides writes that “God has provided for this insofar as He has endowed us with the intellectual capacity that enable us both to act contrary to what has been ordered by the heavenly bodies and to correct, as far as possible, the misfortunes that befall us.” Prophecy comes in to allow us to predict events through the Agent Intellect, which contains knowledge of the spheres and the determined events.

What we see, then, is that the content of prediction is not based on man’s free choice, but the ability to predict the determined nature of the world, which Gersonides admits could be done if someone looks at the stars well enough. Thus, the information available to the prophet is not that much different from what a wise person could know. That is, it is not necessarily quantitatively different, but qualitatively different. It is as true as truth can be predicted. If the prophet is wrong, that is just because humans chose differently than predetermined events would have it. Gersonides is sure to mention the difficulty in a wise person using astrology to accurately predict events, since we need more time to observe the stars. The prophet thus gets knowledge that would otherwise take many years of observing the stars to know.

So now we know the content of prophecy is determined events of the heavenly bodies. This information is conveyed through the Agent Intellect, not particularly but generally. The prophet takes this information and particularize it to the situation concerning him or others. This is an extremely naturalistic view of prophecy. As such, the Agent Intellect cannot even impart supernatural particularized knowledge, just general abstract theory, and the human has to take that and apply it. So he writes, “The Agent Intellect imparts to the material intellect the pattern pertaining to a particular man instead of another man because the recipient of this communication has been thinking about this man, not because of any factor in the Agent Intellect itself.”

We know there is another area in which the prophet differs from the wise man - the prophet can cause miracles to happen. The Agent Intellect waits for the right person who has the prophetic ability to be at the right place, and the prophet “presses the spiritual miracle button”, so to speak, so he causes the miracle to happen by being there with his knowledge. In this way, he is above a simply wise person who lacks the prophetic ability.

Similarly, providence is increased the closer to the Agent Intellect one is in cognitive relationship, so that the prophet would seem to be granted more providential information than the wise man: “It is evident that what is more noble and closer to the perfection of the Agent Intellect receives the divine providence to a greater degree...Since man exhibits different levels of proximity to and remoteness from the Agent Intellect by virtue of his individual character, those that are more strongly attached to it receive divine providence individually...Accordingly, divine providence operates individually in some men (and) in varying degrees in others it does not appear at all.”

However, we can agree that the case can be made from Gersonides’ view of Moses’ uniqueness that the wise man and the prophet only differ as to the ease in which they obtain knowledge. Maimonides certainly saw Moses’ uniqueness as a pillar of Judaism, and his prophetic abilities were somehow much greater than any other prophet, based on the perfection of his imaginative faculty. For Gersonides, this would be difficult to explain, since there should not be a role for the imaginative faculty in prophecy - that is set aside for dreams and divinations. So what makes Moses unique?

According to Gersonides, it is that he was able to isolate his intellect from his other faculties better than anyone else. He was capable of not trembling and being afraid at the prophecy being received. According to this, the knowledge itself was not a unique aspect of Moses. Any prophet, seemingly, could obtain the same knowledge as Moses. And if the prophet just has the ability to obtain knowledge more easily than the wise man, then we can conclude Moses could have the same knowledge as a wise man, at least possibly. And Gersonides does not seem to be concerned for this.

So, we see that Gersonides’ view on prophecy has the prophet (as opposed to the dreamer or diviner) as a wise man who obtains knowledge more easily. However, we also see the prophet has certain abilities that the wise man does not - activation of miracles, and being absolutely right about determined events.

3.

Gersonides rejects Maimonides’ account of divine attributes, and proposes his own. Firstly, do his objections to Maimonides’ account hold water? And secondly, does his own account resolve the critiques he lays on Maimonides? In the next few pages, we shall investigate these two questions to critically evaluate Gersonides’ account of divine attributes.

Maimonides, in the Guide for the Perplexed 1:51-60, argues that God cannot be said to have attributes, since these would give God multiple aspects, removing Him from the category of absolutely simple. In Guide 1:51, he writes, “There is no oneness at all except in believing that there is one simple essence in which there is no complexity or multiplication of notions, but one notion only…” Rather, Maimonides writes, the only way to discuss God is (1:58) “by means of negation.” And, Maimonides gives some leeway to describe God in terms of actions done on earth. This means that if one were to see God described in prayers and Tanach as merciful, that just means the actions we attribute to God were merciful. Someone was saved, God was merciful.

Maimonides notes that we have to be “loose” when it comes to describing God, in some ways, just because there is nothing that language can do for the service of describing God. In the Guide 1:57 he writes “These subtle notions that very clearly elude the minds cannot be considered through the instrumentality of the customary words, which are the greatets among the causes leading unto erro. For the bounds of expression in all languages are very narrow indeed, so that we cannot represent this notion to ourselves except through a certain looseness of expression.” Indeed, in 1:59 he limits our language in describing God in such loose terms for reading the Torah or praying.

Gersonides disagrees with Maimonides in Wars 3:3. He argues that if we can say something perfect exists in man, in necessarily must exist in God. This is so, for example, with regard to knowledge. Yet we can say that a man knows, but we cannot say that God knows? There must be some equivalency between the terms “a man knows” and “God knows.”

This critique seems to fall flat. Why is it necessarily so that there is equivalency in the way God knows and the way man knows? God may have a completely unrecognizable sense of knowledge such that we cannot say He knows in any way that a man knows. Certainly Maimonides makes this explicit in Laws of Repentance 5:5, where he adjures his reader not to think about God’s knowledge because the reader simply will not be able to understand it:

“The Holy One, blessed be He, does not know with a knowledge that is external from Him as do men, whose knowledge and selves are two [different entities]. Rather, He, may His name be praised, and His knowledge are one. Human knowledge cannot comprehend this concept in its entirety for just as it is beyond the potential of man to comprehend and conceive the essential nature of the Creator, as [Exodus 33:20] states: "No man will perceive, Me and live," so, too, it is beyond man's potential to comprehend and conceive the Creator's knowledge. This was the intent of the prophet's [Isaiah 55:8] statements: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways, My ways."Accordingly, we do not have the potential to conceive how The Holy One, blessed be He, knows all the creations and their deeds. However, this is known without any doubt.”

So, I would argue, Maimonides would at least consider God’s knowledge outside the realm of human conception. But this may be so of many other features as it regards God.

Gersonides also argues against any distinction between positive and negative attributes. In the same way as Maimonides says that positive attributes do not apply to God, so too negative attributes do not apply to God. If positive attribution cannot be used because it creates an equivocation between God and man, then so do negative attributes. But if we allow ourselves to use negative attribution, because we allow for some equivalency when it comes that way, we should be able to say its positive opposite with some equivalency.

However, I would argue that Maimonides would admit that we cannot really use negative attribution either - only that we must use it because we need something. Using negative attributes have the added bonus of allowing us to realize how different God is from us. This is a language game, as Maimonides would be the first to admit, and there is no good language when it touches the divine.

Be that as it may, Gersonides proposes using positive attributes such as “exists”, “one”, and “essence”, and the difference between the words in reference to man and God is a “difference in terms of greater perfection.” He must then answer for how he can do so if it violates God’s ultimate simplicity. His answer is that we are just using words, and linguistically, it doesn’t necessarily imply plurality. Linguistics is such that we might call “redness a red color,” even though it doesn’t contain two things, “color” and “red.”

I find this strange as an argument against Maimonides because Maimonides is also willing to claim linguistics can be loose, and we can recognize how words don’t mean the essence of a thing. But we limit this to religious conversation, because it’s bad to accustom ourselves to this in philosophic conversation. Again, Maimonides is concerned with comparisons and equivalences in the way we allow ourselves to describe God. In my reading of Maimonides, the problem of positive divine attributes isn’t necessarily that we are implying that God is complex, but that we are allowing ourselves to use language that is philosophically incorrect if taken literally. It’s bad for the philosophic mind to do so, to Maimonides. The fact that an artifact of language allows us to describe things in ways that seem pluralistic but aren’t just bolsters the point that we are afraid of the impression it allows for and we censor ourselves from making such statements.

Though Maimonides might be on solid ground even after Gersonides’ attack, one must admit that Gersonides has the upper hand on two levels. Firstly, his argument from the perspective of philosophy and linguistics can be adequately defended. He just comes from a differing perspective than Maimonides on whether descriptions of God imply plurality. But secondly, he definitely has the upper hand in terms of common religious sensibilities. Maimonides relegates the descriptions of God in the Torah and prayers as inappropriate philosophically, and only tolerated as religious “looseness” of language. However, Gersonides lifts up these descriptions as basically true descriptions of God, and this accords with the traditional religious understanding.